


The Greater Good

by Dernhelm



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, ME2, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dernhelm/pseuds/Dernhelm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night is a lonely time in space, especially when you've come back from the dead. Just a quiet moment in Shepard's head shortly after her arrival on the on the <i>Normandy 2</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greater Good

**  
**

It was always night time in space.

Shepard leaned back in her chair, and let her gaze drift up to the stars racing over the captain's cabin's skylight. The sight soothed her in a way little else could: a feeling of everything being right with the galaxy, things being normal.

_Cerberus bringing her back from the dead. Collectors ravaging human colonies. The quietly mounting threat of the Reapers._

Yeah, real “normal.”

Normal was a far away from her as Kaiden was.

For the millionth time that evening, Shepard snuck a glance down at the framed holoimage on her desk. Miranda did say she’d spent two years learning everything she could about Shepard, and apparently that included digging up some of her more…classified intel.

It’s not as if Shepard had kept her relationship with Kaiden secret, per say. But it was a delicate situation. She was his commanding officer as well as his lover, and the line had to remain clear between one role and another.

As it had when she had ordered him off the disintegrating _Normandy_ two years before. Kaiden had wanted to stay by her side, but she had needed him to focus on the lives of others. The last words she had ever spoken to him had been an order to leave her behind to die.

Shepard’s heart clenched, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden ache. Here, in the privacy of her quarters, she could finally let herself feel her grief, mourn for the possibilities that had been stolen when her life had been taken. She didn’t cry, for the pain was too keen to blunt with tears. But she did finally pick up the holoimage, let herself study Kaiden's familiar face.

It wasn’t much; just his Alliance identification photo. He’d been younger when it was taken, and his dark eyes crackled with barely-checked fury, his jaw locked in a steely grimace. It was the face of a different man than the one she'd called her lover. That Kaiden was no less energetic, but he’d learned to focus that power, use it to his advantage rather than let it use him. He was more combat-seasoned than the young man in the image, but her Kaiden knew how to laugh, to crack a joke, to allow himself occasional joy.  

She wondered if he still did.

Not for the first time she wondered if she should be making a bee-line to him, to let him see her before the rumors reached him through the Alliance channels. If Anderson knew she was alive, there was a good chance Kaiden did as well.

Two years was a long time, though. She had had the easy job of being dead. Kaiden had gone through mourning and--hopefully--arrived at the other side a stronger man. One who had moved on with his life. Perhaps there was even a new woman, or a new family.  Did Shepard really want to put Kaiden through even more turmoil, let him see that his long grief had been for nothing?

With a heavy sigh, Shepard put down the holoimage, toggling the “off” switch with her thumb. Alright. That was enough time to wallow. There was much, much more at stake than her personal life, and she was a pro at putting the greater good before her own needs.

It’s what had made her a Spectre.

It’s why Cerberus brought her back from the dead.

It’s what was going to allow her to stop the Reapers once and for all.

It’s what made Kaiden love her in the first place.

She couldn’t let him down. Not now. Not this time.

 


End file.
